readingthroughtheages's review
4.0
A coming of age story that has plenty of charm while pulling on readers' heartstrings!
msaplusteacher's review against another edition
5.0
"Your home has wheels, but your heart has roots right here." Derby, Triple & Garland will take root in your heart! Filled with family, fun & fried food - A Rambler Steals Home is sure to win over lots of middle grade readers! Carter Higgins has such a great voice & sense of character - from their unique names to their personalities that leap from the page! On my Mock Newbery List for 2018.
yapha's review against another edition
4.0
The perfect summer read! Derby Clark, her brother Triple, and her father Garland are ramblers. They spend the different seasons in different places, moving from town to town in their RV and the attached grill. Summers they spend in Ridge Creek, at the stadium of their Triple-A baseball team, the Rockskippers. Derby can't wait to get back to the place that feels the most like home, but this summer, things are different. The old traditions are falling by the wayside and Derby struggles to make sense of the changes. As she sees the people and the town with new eyes, she realizes that it is time for her to return some of the love and caring that she has been given. A sweet look at the importance of kindness. Recommended for grades 4 & up.
agettler24's review
5.0
Darcy is an awesome girl with a huge heart! Ridge Creek is such a great town of close knit people that love each other. Have fun spending time with Darcy and her family as they spend time in their rambler on the minor league team parking lot selling burgers and vegetaaaaaarian sweet potato fries.
benedorm's review against another edition
2.0
All the way through A Rambler Steals Home, I found myself asking questions that probably weren't entirely relevant to the story, but that nonetheless kept me from fully engaging with the plot and characters.
Rambler is narrated by Derby Christmas Clark, who lives out of the titular vehicle alongside her brother, Triple, and her father, Garland. Each summer, they return to the town of Ridge Creek, Virginia, and operate a food stand outside of the stadium of the minor-league Ridge Creek Rockskippers. This year, however, some of their Ridge Creek friends are gone, some have had life-changing experiences, and some have secrets that will soon rise to the surface.
I'm a huge baseball fan, and I enjoy attending minor league games. However, I found myself coming back again and again to the question of what kind of team the Rockskippers are. We're told at one point that "players came and went as they got good enough for the big leagues," which makes it sound like this is a minor league affiliate of a team in the majors, although no specific parent team is ever listed. The Rockskippers would have to be a low-level team, however, given that Ridge Creek seems to be a small town indeed. (For what it's worth, the town where I live has 30,000 people in it and still only has a low-A team, one step above the bottom of the organized minor leagues.) But the starting right fielder, Goose Plogger, seems to have played for the team for at least 14 or 15 years; given that he has an 11-year-old daughter born after his marriage to a town local, he's almost certainly in his early to mid-thirties anyway. Even in an independent league, the fringe-iest level of professional ball, it defies belief that a player that age would a) still be on the same team, and b) never have changed teams or advanced a level and still be starting. Maybe, maybe, this would have been possible back in the old pre-1950s Pacific Coast League, but it's simply not a thing that happens now.
Similarly, this appears to be a team that only has one groundskeeper -- a twelve-year-old boy -- and one person selling tickets. Even down at the level of my local single-A team, there are multiple ticket windows, a whole grounds crew, and a team of PR people, sales reps, and management types. I'm just not buying any of the setting here; it's like a Truman Show-level recreation of the idea of a small-town baseball team, rather than anything based in reality.
I might have spent less time thinking about this if I had had anything else to concentrate on. But the plot is an accumulation of off-the-shelf parts from The Higher Power of Lucky, and Missing May, and any number of other books about missing mothers, sorrowing fathers and daughters, and small-town secrets about loss and acceptance. I couldn't find anything here that I hadn't read elsewhere, and so the weirdness of the setting ended up occupying most of my attention.
A longer version of this review appears at For Those About to Mock (abouttomock.blogspot.com)
Rambler is narrated by Derby Christmas Clark, who lives out of the titular vehicle alongside her brother, Triple, and her father, Garland. Each summer, they return to the town of Ridge Creek, Virginia, and operate a food stand outside of the stadium of the minor-league Ridge Creek Rockskippers. This year, however, some of their Ridge Creek friends are gone, some have had life-changing experiences, and some have secrets that will soon rise to the surface.
I'm a huge baseball fan, and I enjoy attending minor league games. However, I found myself coming back again and again to the question of what kind of team the Rockskippers are. We're told at one point that "players came and went as they got good enough for the big leagues," which makes it sound like this is a minor league affiliate of a team in the majors, although no specific parent team is ever listed. The Rockskippers would have to be a low-level team, however, given that Ridge Creek seems to be a small town indeed. (For what it's worth, the town where I live has 30,000 people in it and still only has a low-A team, one step above the bottom of the organized minor leagues.) But the starting right fielder, Goose Plogger, seems to have played for the team for at least 14 or 15 years; given that he has an 11-year-old daughter born after his marriage to a town local, he's almost certainly in his early to mid-thirties anyway. Even in an independent league, the fringe-iest level of professional ball, it defies belief that a player that age would a) still be on the same team, and b) never have changed teams or advanced a level and still be starting. Maybe, maybe, this would have been possible back in the old pre-1950s Pacific Coast League, but it's simply not a thing that happens now.
Similarly, this appears to be a team that only has one groundskeeper -- a twelve-year-old boy -- and one person selling tickets. Even down at the level of my local single-A team, there are multiple ticket windows, a whole grounds crew, and a team of PR people, sales reps, and management types. I'm just not buying any of the setting here; it's like a Truman Show-level recreation of the idea of a small-town baseball team, rather than anything based in reality.
I might have spent less time thinking about this if I had had anything else to concentrate on. But the plot is an accumulation of off-the-shelf parts from The Higher Power of Lucky, and Missing May, and any number of other books about missing mothers, sorrowing fathers and daughters, and small-town secrets about loss and acceptance. I couldn't find anything here that I hadn't read elsewhere, and so the weirdness of the setting ended up occupying most of my attention.
A longer version of this review appears at For Those About to Mock (abouttomock.blogspot.com)
kendallbridgete's review against another edition
2.0
2.5 stars.
It was all right. It didn't set my world on fire.
It was all right. It didn't set my world on fire.
mindfullibrarian's review
4.0
What a sweet story! The language in this middle grade story just leaps off the page, and I just couldn't stop from reading the entire book with a twang in my mental voice. It's a story of family and home and traditions, all of which are depicted beautifully. Highly recommended for students in grades 3-6, especially those who love a good down home story about America's pastime. If you have a classroom of kids as a captive audience, this would be an amazing read aloud ~ and PLEASE read it with a twang - it will make me happy.
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